[Okgrantsmanship] NSF REPORT POEM

[Mason, Linda]

A Poem:

NSF Report

Now I lay me down to snore

So here's my NSF report.

If I should die before I wake

Just grab my cash and buy a cake.

It really wasn't quite so bad

To write this thing

But I'm so sad

I didn't write it long ago.

And failing that, I write these lines

In stark reminder of my crimes

And pecadillos that I know

Did victimize my friends and all

The granty people down the hall.

Who treat me far too well, and so

Should not put up with me at all.

I'll dine on water, and on gruel

Awaiting my next grant renewal.

The last I did, it seemed well written

At least it seemed when I was sittin'

With my 'top across my lap.

But then I woke up from my nap

To gaze upon my limpid screen

And see what I had never seen:

The text of mediocrity

The megalo-verbosity

The drivel that was oh, so clear

and seemed so clever and so droll

was not enough to make the roll

At NSF, who by design

Let pass a long and baleful time

Then failed to fund my grant last year.

And tho, unfunded, high and dry,

I never weep, or sniff, or cry.

I merely seek for that employ

That suits the bad-grant-writing boy,

Who cannot publish, write or speak,

And hit the skids downtown last week.

I do not care, I really don't

It doesn't bug me, so I won't

Complain at all. I don't, I'm not...

Hey! I'm just talkin' here, so what?

Another grant I must submit?

One more report, as yet unwrit?

I laugh, I cry, my sides are split.

Cut me some slack, I'm over it.

Chad Nusbaum serves as Co-Director, Sequencing and Analysis

Program, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA.

 

Linda Mason, Ed.D.

Coordinator for Grant Writing and External Funding

Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education

655 Research Parkway, Suite 200

Oklahoma City, OK 73104

405-225-9486

lmason at osrhe.edu

IP: 164.58.250.178

 

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